Things to Do in Hell

Chris Martin

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781566895958
• eBook ISBN: 9781566896016
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Are we living in a shitty heaven or a tender hell? Chris Martin’s poems wrestle with reconciling the shocking horrors and common graces of everyday life in America.

Join Chris Martin for a poetic walking tour of hell—or is it heaven? In this wickedly clever collection, Martin asks how we go about living in the tension between protesting lunatic politicians and picking up the kids from school, mourning a dying Earth and making soup, combating white supremacy and loving our dear ones. Martin’s poems pick at the tender scabs protecting our national and individual identities and call for more honest healing. Things to Do in Hell channels 2016 anger into 2020 action with sophisticated, rhythmic verse that compels us to beat our swords into ploughshares and join the fight.

PALINODE

Dying out, dying in

A crowd of impossible people

Seed back to swagger

Of concussive light

A crowd of impossible people

In the generalized insolence

Of concussive light

A bedraggled bee priest

In the generalized insolence

Until stumbling on purpose became a kind of dance

A bedraggled bee priest

Calling this song appropriate fever

Until stumbling on purpose became a kind of dance

And scraping clues from the sloughed eggshell of zero

Calling this song appropriate fever

As melody spools loose

And scraping clues from the sloughed eggshell of zero

Courting not what coheres

As melody spools loose

Minus batteries, bladder full, excess arteries

Courting not what coheres

We follow only putrefaction

Minus batteries, bladder full, excess arteries

Pickled and fetal in a slow formaldehyde waltz

We follow only putrefaction

All of our plural in the surge and blur

Pickled and fetal in a slow formaldehyde waltz

I will love you more

All of our plural in the surge and blur

While at home like a sold flower

I will love you more

In fits of unpaid disavowal

While at home like a sold flower

A circle whose center is everywhere

In fits of unpaid disavowal

And crashing down with heaven’s offal

A circle whose center is everywhere

I want to be serrated

And crashing down with heaven’s offal

Prowling an ersatz horizon

I want to be serrated

Licking a speckled fender

Prowling an ersatz horizon

Where the you finally becomes you

Licking a speckled fender

With pagan longing

Where the you finally becomes you

In a library where the dead crest on waves of pelvic light

With pagan longing

They called it a poem

In a library where the dead crest on waves of pelvic light

Horrifying the merest fact into choreography

They called it a poem

Where an evening cloud stains the nasturtiums

Horrifying the merest fact into choreography

She asked me to hold her like an octopus

Where an evening cloud stains the nasturtiums

Posting torrid flowers of true rage

She asked me to hold her like an octopus

At the world’s wet, unfinished edge

Posting torrid flowers of true rage

The guy at the bodega

At the world’s wet, unfinished edge

Is asking what’s safer

The guy at the bodega

Compulsively parts

Is asking what’s safer

To be the sword or

Compulsively parts

The curtain of his lip

To be the sword or

The flesh opening a way forward

The curtain of his lip

In the vibration between selves

The flesh opening a way forward

To accumulate in a spare room

In the vibration between selves

Aggregate pulse

To accumulate in a spare room

The hundred billion stairs blood walks in silence

Aggregate pulse

Tricking pauses into cinema

The hundred billion stairs blood walks in silence

Knowing we could say anything now

Tricking pauses into cinema

Time is one fucked-up dude

Knowing we could say anything now

Fledged between cracked marble

Time is one fucked-up dude

Like a willow huffing rat breath in a half-frozen field

Fledged between cracked marble

This country is leaving this country

Like a willow huffing rat breath in a half-frozen field

A hymn is what we most resemble

This country is leaving this country

Nothing but rhythm

A hymn is what we most resemble

In his deepest red and flaming robe

Nothing but rhythm

I came apart and they called it laughing

In his deepest red and flaming robe

A little object spoke

I came apart and they called it laughing

My hand on your back in the opening to the cave

A little object spoke

My ear so far...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Epilogue
• Zealous
• Palinode
• Yes the Animals
• Things to Do in Hell
• Exit
• Walking Tour of an Imaginary Homeland
• Wound
• An Ouroboros of True Forgiveness
• Vicious This
• Walking Tour of We No Longer Live inside the Whale
• Unified
• Secret Menu
• The Next Day and Thrum
• Breakup Mixtape
• Says I
• Itters
• Really
• If You Lived Here You’d Be Dead Already
• Quickly If Never
• Not a Few Wander Homeless on Darksome Paths
• Past
• Everything Else
• Owns Even the Slow
• Dénouement
• Never By
• A Game in Which Losing Is Inconsequential
• Lecture on Western Music
• A Big Hungry Us
• Deciduous Hymn
• A Small Human Being Breaks Everything
• My Ungodly
• Flags of Surrender
• Lesson
• After Dawn
• Knowing I Still Don’t
• Pain and Mercy
• Jump from Fly
• This Is Just to Say
• Honey
• It’s Like They Always Say
• Gasp the Reason
• Brighter Office in Day’s Mistake
• Forget How to Speak
• Answers
• Except
• Y
• Deepen
• Y R U O K
• Curdled Like All
• In the Circle Whose Center Is Everywhere
• Bore
• Fifty Shitty Heavens
• And
• Preface
• Notes
• Acknowledgments